


grab your boy, your girl, and hold on tight

by whytho



Series: max be in a MUSICAL [1]
Category: Paranatural (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, also if you came her looking for anyone other than Violet you aren't gonna see em, the other ones are included because they speak not because they play a significant role, this is me projecting on the character that i loved when i was her age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-26 23:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15011753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whytho/pseuds/whytho
Summary: “Is she awake?” Isabel asks, and Ed gives a muted reply. They finish their conversation, but Isabel apparently figures Violet’s asleep; as she leaves she brushes a soft hand over Violet’s head, like she does when Ed falls asleep on the beach.Violet tries not respond. After the second bell rings, and Dimitri has arrived to sit next to Ed, she sits up and tries to ignore the way her hair falls back down across her neck. Lucky, Ed is as observant as a brick wall, and Dimitri is taking a nap of his own. She swallows, and Jeff comes over to sit next to her.





	grab your boy, your girl, and hold on tight

Violet drops her books down on the third desk from the window in the back row of her home room. Jeff and Ed, she knows, both have this homeroom, and Dimitri. She sits. 

Her older brother made her get up early so that he could go to football practice, and Violet stayed in the library for forty-five minutes until first bell. Now, with only the teacher in class, she drops her head down and closes her eyes. A fifteen minute nap would be good. 

Five minutes into her well-deserved rest, Isabel Guerra drops Ed off next to Violet. 

“Is she awake?” Isabel asks, and Ed gives a muted reply. They finish their conversation, but Isabel apparently figures Violet’s asleep; as she leaves she brushes a soft hand over Violet’s head, like she does when Ed falls asleep on the beach. 

Violet tries not respond. After the second bell rings, and Dimitri has arrived to sit next to Ed, she sits up and tries to ignore the way her hair falls back down across her neck. Lucky, Ed is as observant as a brick wall, and Dimitri is taking a nap of his own. She swallows, and Jeff comes over to sit next to her. 

“Hey Violet!” he says. “First day of the year!” 

“Yeah,” Violet replies. Jeff grins at her, hair no better than it was at the start of summer, and she leans back in her seat. The bell rings for the third and last time, and Dimitri sits up. The light melody of homeroom starts. 

 

(Their table at lunch is big. Suzy and Colin and Dimitri sit together, because they’re locked in a desperate battle for valedictorian, and Dimitri is strangely close with Isabel and Ed. Cody, then, is friends with RJ, and with RJ comes the bikers. They go to the corner store, like they always have, and sit crammed at three tables pushed together. Violet has boys in front and to the sides of her, although Lisa shoves Jeff to the side a little when she brings their food over and sits. 

Despite what the girls in home ec say-thought-said-think, Violet is not easy. She sits next to guys, mostly, but that’s partially because they don’t call her easy. Really, she only hangs with chicks when Isabel’s got something going on, or when it’s Lisa. Mostly she stays with Jeff and Cody; Ed, Dimitri, and Colin; and for a little while that she can’t easily recall, Stephen and Isaac. With them, she isn’t stressed so much — her heartbeat stays steady, and when she leaves it doesn’t feel like resurfacing from the depths of something dark and inscrutable.) 

 

In the summer, slid between the desperate heat of the afternoon and the sticky warmth of the evening, Violet sits next to Sarah at the beach. Sarah has her legs just poking out from beneath a beach umbrella and a book on her lap, brown skin warmed by the sun. 

“Hey,” Sarah says. She scoots over, closer into the shade, so Violet can move a shoulder out of the sun. 

“Hey,” Violet says. She swallows, words lining her throat. 

Sarah lies her book face down and turns a little to Violet. “Oh, are you going to my band’s thing this weekend? It’s gonna be coolsville.” 

Violet didn’t know that Sarah was in a band, let alone that she had something going on that weekend. 

“Uh, yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I was thinking about going with… Cody.” Out of all of them, he’s the most likely to be into whatever music Sarah’s band plays, and the easiest to convince to come with her. 

“Cool!” Sarah says. “I’m going to the corner store, if you want to come.” 

Violet did go with her to the corner store, and she cajoled Cody into coming to the corner store again that Saturday. In front of the bar, on the raised platform that was normally overshadowed by Lisa’s bar, a boy with glasses and firm eyebrows played the trumpet, the twins sang slow and flowing, and Sarah played the guitar. Violet watched, breathless, in the corner they always used for lunch, and Cody rested his head against her shoulder, wordless. 

She didn’t stay behind to say anything to Sarah — instead, she found Lisa when she clocked out asked her for a ride. The whole way home, she had the sound of the twins’ voices blending together playing over and over again in her mind, a record slipping back to where it started.

Now, Sarah sits next to her in science. Violet still hasn’t gotten up the courage to say anything about the music. 

 

In the summer, sometimes, Violet works as a lifeguard on the beach. She wouldn’t have gotten the job of the other applicant had been able to swim, but it’s good work. She gets paid a little, and gets to see everyone who goes to the beach.

That is to say that she sees everyone in town, because everyone goes to the beach. 

On the cold mornings of May, Isabel’s grandfather and a blond man walk the beach. Every time he sees her on the lifeguard’s chair, Isabel’s grandfather smiles, eyes hard. The blond man, familiar and unknown, nods at Violet and doesn’t wait for her to nod back. 

Jeff never knows how to surf, no matter how much he practices, and Suzy reads one fiction book a week, although she always has to force herself. Ollie goes on swims every other night and runs when he doesn’t swim. Despite coming often, Alex burns easily and always has to stay under an umbrella. 

Cody sneaks off to Makeout Cove with the tourists that come in — the ones from the cities, looking for a nice town and a week or two’s rest. The first time Violet saw him, leaving a few minutes after a college student in bright green baggies, she spent her break behind the corner store, cool brick on her back and head pointed up to the skies. 

Lisa found her, as she always could, and handed Violet a plate of fries. Violet dropped her head down and wordlessly, Lisa passed her a bottle of ketchup. They sat together on the concrete for ten minutes, eating fries, until Violet stood up and dusted herself off and returned to her job. 

Now, Violet watches him lead another radical boy past the rocky part of the shore, beyond the end of the beach, and lets the words sit dry and useless in her mouth. 

Isabel spends mornings surfing, and most afternoons doing what her grandfather wants her to do. Ed just surfs, always, and Violet thinks he’s laid on every grain of sand the beach has to offer. 

 

Violet has never been a lead in a song of her own. She’s hummed backup for her parents at dinner, and when she was little she sang in the music of big group play dates, but none of her conflicts were ever big enough for a song. When another of Suzy’s beats fall, which is probably once a week, Violet will always be a body in the background, and she participated in the big corner store numbers. Never, though, does she have a song of her own. 

“I think it’s ‘cause you don’t ever want to be in the front like that,” Jeff tells her. The sunlight is falling through his living room window and and onto his hair, turning it creamy orange. “I mean, Suzy loves the attention, but you never really want anyone to notice you.” 

Violet scowls goodnaturedly. “I raise my hand in class,” she tells him. “People know who I am, and I’m fine with it.”

“Yeah,” Jeff says, and closes his notebook to look at her. “But you don’t want to be extraordinary. You don’t want people to be involved enough in your life to sing along.” 

Violet doesn’t reply. Jeff may be right, but Violet would rather know he is and not say anything than let him gloat. 

“Nah,” Cody says from where he seemed to be napping. He opens his eyes and smiles at Violet. “She’s just building up to something great. A really big number, with the whole town, and it ends with a big kiss.” 

Jeff laughs easily, and Cody doesn’t turn his smile away from Violet until she smiles back. 

 

The thing is, Violet’s never kissed a boy. 

(She kissed Suzy once, at a bonfire, closer to morning than night. It had been a little messy and a lot intense, because Suzy went into a exhausted kiss with a good friend with the fervor she attacked all of life with.)

The thing is, she’s not sure she wants to. 

(She doesn’t think about it -- kissing boys or kissing girls. Jeff, once, had talked about holding hands with stars in his eyes, and Violet had to look at the floor.) 

(Cody kisses boys, one part of her mind says. Cody punches anyone who looks at him funny, says another.) 

(Violet’s not sure that she has it in her to do that -- get in fistfights after holding someone’s hand. To have stars in your eyes was one thing; blood on your knuckles was another.) 

 

Maxwell Puckett has dark hair, shaved close to his skull, and pale eyes. His baggies are strange — the cut is different than Violet’s seen before, and his shirt clings close to his chest like a girl’s top half of a swimsuit. At Isabel’s, a few nights into his stay, he is hesitant to sing but sure of himself, so willing to argue with the room when his views are more radical than anything Violet had ever heard. 

When Violet went to get a glass of water in the middle of the night, Lisa and Isaac were already in the kitchen, blue eyes locked in the dimness. 

“It’s not a question of what, but _who_ ,” Isaac says fiercely, gripping the sides of the counter behind him like it’s a lifeline. “We’re Mayview, and we can’t just listen—“ 

“You don’t even want to hear what he says!” Lisa interrupts. “I _know_ we shouldn’t just believe him, but that doesn’t mean he…” 

She trails off when she sees Violet in the doorway, and Isaac’s head follows her eyes. Violet doesn’t say anything, just grabs a glass and turns on the tap. She sits at the kitchen island, a chair between her and Lisa, and asks her water glass, “Do you really think his ideas are that… unrealistic?” 

“No,” Lisa answers immediately. Isaac hesitates, for just a second, and Violet looks up to meet his eyes. 

She doesn’t even care about what Isaac O’Connor thinks, not really. He’s a year older than them, and she’s only really ever known him tangentially. Apart from that split second-month-day-year she spent with him and Stephen, when they met on the rocky part of the beach and in the twilight dimmed pavilion behind the lake and the part of the dump with spare bike parts, she’s never been close with him. 

(She can remember laughing and laughing once with them. She’s not sure where — she can just remember that feeling, heady and strange and comfortable. She can barely remember when they were close. It’s fuzzy and blurred like all of her winters have been; like the visits to her grandmother two hours away by train: like everything she’s learned in the eternity she’s been being taught for. She knows it happened, but it seemed unrealistic and flat. That moment, of laughter until her cheeks hurt, was the only part of her friendship with Stephen and Isaac that has ever been memorable.) 

“He doesn’t think like how I’m used to,” Isaac says instead of answering the question. He drops eye contact with Violet, looks at the floor, and then walks out of the kitchen. Lisa stands and tucks her chair in, the feet scraping loudly in the quiet house. She hesitates, for a second, and follows Isaac.

**Author's Note:**

> please know that this work was titled "violent stylz" as a google doc because i really felt like that applied. the actual title came from... drum roll please... a song from teen beach movie. you know how it goes. 
> 
> also: i think this is one of a couple fics in which i use sarah as... pretty much an oc???? her name was said in-comic so i get to make her whoever i want >:)


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